Described below are methods for automatically locating a fire alarm, in particular in a building, and to a device for performing the methods.
Major buildings (office blocks, public buildings) are generally equipped with fire alarms which automatically trigger an alarm in the event of a fire. This alarm is relayed to a control center, where it indicates in which room or part of the building a fire has broken out. For that purpose it must be known in the control center which fire alarm is installed where.
Typically, every fire alarm possesses a unique identification number, e.g. a so-called MAC address (Media Access Control address), which it sends together with the reason for the alarm in its alarm message to the control center. So that the exact location of the alarm can be determined in the control center on the basis of the identification number, the engineer must record the installation location at the time that the fire alarm is installed and store the location together with the identification number e.g. in a database. Toward that end, he must read off the identification number on the fire alarm and record it in a document prior to the installation. In addition, he must record the number or name of the room, and in the case of larger rooms must also include a description of the alarm's position in the room. Often this information is recorded on paper during the installation and later, at the computer, transferred into a database. Alternatively, however, the data can also be input directly on a notebook at the time of installation. In another well-known approach, before the installation takes place, a unique identification number is allocated in a plan of the building to each designated fire alarm and entered in the plan. The allocated identification number is set on each of the individual fire alarms and the respective fire alarm is labeled accordingly. During the installation the engineer must then select and install the fire alarm designated for the respective installation site according to its labeling. In so doing he must make absolutely sure that he is installing the right fire alarm at the right location. The known methods are based on manual inputs and are therefore susceptible to error.